Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2014 - Page 65

THE ANGLE
By Olavi Louko
The writer is Deputy Mayor of the City of Espoo
On Track for Solid City
In Helsinki, and especially in her
neighbouring municipalities, there
is plenty of potential to solidify the
urban structure. Helsinki’s western
neighbour, Espoo, has a great
opportunity to tighten up the city
structure by diversifying the traffic
network – especially rail traffic.
Espoo is the second biggest city in
Finland with the strongest growth,
proportionally speaking.
A
t present, Espoo and Helsinki are
building a western continuation line –
spanning 14 kilometres – for the metro. Along the tracks there will be eight new
metro stations. On top of each station and in
the surrounding area there will be new commercial, office and residential construction.
The new metroline and its stations
will be operational in early 2016. Already
in 2014, work will commence to carry the
western line onwards, all the way to the Espoo’s western border. The length of this ad-
ditional stretch is 7.5 kilometres and it will
feature five new stations. Once the extra
stretch is completed – before the year 2020
– all of Southern Espoo will be able to access the metro.
Running through Central Espoo, there
is a railway connection from Helsinki to
west. By building parallel rails to this connection, it is possible to enable city train
traffic through Central Espoo in fluid motion, quite like the metro. This work should
be completed before 2020.
After this is done, the aim is to connect the metro line and railroad with three
rail connections running north-south – quite
possibly trams could be utilised here. As a
consequence, Espoo will come to feature a
rail network with great coverage. This network is an important part of the big picture:
the evolution of the rail tra